I agree with you've posted Joseph, it's what I've been trying to get people
to understand for a very long time
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From: "Joseph Lee" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2011 20:28
To: <[email protected]>
Subject: [Braillenote] Opinion: Its about what fits best
Hi folks,
The following is a response to some recent posts on the list:
Its About Choosing the Best for the Time Being
Throughout our lives, we make choices - things which are important down to
trivial choices. However, I believe the toughest choccce is when the
choices we make shape the rest of the community. Such choices include
venues for meetings, slogan for a company and so forth.
In connection with specialized embedded system, we have to make a number
of tough decisions during program development cycle (process of planning,
writing, testing and releasing a program). This could include feature
sets which are possible, whether to support old versus new and how to
implement certain features. In this composition I'll focus on the third
category from both user and developer point of view.
Once a programmer decides to implement a feature, the next job would be
thinking about how and what to use to make this new feature come alive.
This involves going over limits of the target system to which this feature
would be integrated, as well as availible resources out there which could
satisfy objectives of this feature. Then the outcome is compared to the
expectations of the user in terms of feature requests and feature
suggestions.
For instance, suppose if a programmer decides to work on an HTML editor
and if the users requests BrailleNote's wordprocessor like interface for
writing text. Then developer would think to himself, "well, since
wordprocessor uses text and format commands for inserting various fonts,
why dinn't I use that method?" Certaintly that route is most promising.
Then he would search around to see if this kind of thing has been
implemented for the OS that the system is based on. Suppose he finds two
such programs - one that reads a special text file and turns into HTML
page, and another one which has its own interface for writing HTML files
and previewing it. Which of these two approaches would suit the
customers' demands about using wordprocessor like feature to write ETML
pages? In our case, the first version would be most suitable. Even though
the second one has a preview feature to allow customers to view the
progress of their page, the first one offers easier way of presenting HTML
editor as a text editor by saving the resulting page as a special text
from which our HTML page can be born. Thus the programmer works on this
editor program, releases it and this becomes a huge success both for its
performance and ease of use.
As the reader can see, when it comes to implementing a feature, it is not
just things which are availible that'll accomplish the goals, but also
finding a way to use it to meet users' expectations. However, there are
situations when something prevents a feature from being worked on, such as
licensing and hardware.
For instance, in connection with mp3 recording, suppose that some users
found some programs which would "allow" something to be recorded as
compressed audio files. The developer would say, "thanks for letting me
know about those" and would begin investigating whether that program meets
the specifications for the system he is working on. But we have some
constraints: the system may have low memory or the unit might not respond
quickly while recording in compressed form is in progress.
And then suppose that the developer has found a fast engine (program) that
promises to convert recordings in wav to compressed audio while
recording. He wishes to use it (and saw the code for it and found its
doable), but it has some licensing scheme that prevents this program to be
used unless authorized by its distributor. But then he found a slightly
slower program that offers to convert the wav audio to compressed form
after the recording is over, and he also found that the licensing scheme
fits his objectives.
Which of these engines would he use? HE says to himself, "since users
requested recording directly in mp3 format, then I should use the first
program; but I dare not tamper with licenses for that one. On the other
hand, the second program would fit my budget and licensing needs, but it
is slower than the first program and might not be ideal for some users."
Ultimately, he chose the first program, but to save cost, he had to
eliminate one feature from the users' wish list to be worked on another
time.
As the reader can see, even making a small decision could mean bigger
consequences for others around us, and the choices that we make may not be
the best for this situation (as the second example shows). Therefore,
when it comes to inclusion of something, the developer needs to think
about how to implement it, possibility of including external systems to
make this feature come alive, and whether this feature can be implemented
safely within the limits of the target system (certaintly they don't want
buggy program). A good example is recent inclusion of xpdf engine to
extract text from PDF files. Even though there are lots of PDF readers
out there for Windows CE, the objective for choosing this particular
engine could have been ease of use, possibility of editing extracted text
and easy integration with other KeySoft subsystems. (the last statement
is just a hypothesis)
Hope this helps. If you have any comments, please let us know.
Cheers,
Joseph
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